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Floor Statement on Republican Budget

Mar 19, 2013

Ways and Means Committee Ranking Member Sander Levin (D-MI) today made the following statement on the House floor in opposition to the Republican budget:

This Republican budget is tone deaf, the result of blind ideology. The Republicans say, but they don't say how. We've just heard ‘we know we can do it.’ But you don't say how. So what you come up with on the Republican side is a mirage and I think a dangerous one. Let me give you an example talking about their proposals on taxes. Under their budget, the top rate is to be reduced from 39.6% to 25%. The AMT will be repealed. The corporate tax rate will be cut from 35% to 25%. But you don't find one syllable in the Republican budget on how all of these tax cuts will be paid for. They don't identify a single tax policy that will end.

The Republican budget would mean a huge tax cut for the very wealthy, several hundred thousand dollars a year, and leave a nearly $6 trillion hole in the deficit that would lead to tax increases for middle-income families. That isn't balance. That is total imbalance. At the same time, Republicans propose cutting $3.3 trillion from programs for people with low and moderate incomes, including hundreds of billions of dollars for food nutrition and Medicaid programs. So I want to end by asking the Republicans when they come and talk about their tax proposals to name a specific that they would address. It's not in the Republican budget. Name one, name two, name three. Otherwise, it's worse than empty.